Tuesday, October 21, 2008

There are few paths which believe in 330 million gods. There are others who believe in 330 million with one chief god. There are some, who say there is no god at all. There are some who are monists and believe in one principle (like Brahman). Others reject everything which lacks any sort of empirical evidence. Some believe in authority of Vedas, some do not, and others to variable extents. Some simply emphasize on doing your duty honestly, without caring a damn about God. Others leave their duties and keep on thinking about the nature of god.

We can see, thousands of religious, philosophical, ritualistic paths have beautifully assimilated with each other to give a strange cocktail called Hindus. Few of them have left their core beliefs and have changed. Many others have retained it, yet with no complications of identity.

I sure there are many elements of the religion of Greeks, Kushans, Huns, Scythians, Mongols, Turks (preislamic) and countless local and tribal religions in this conglomerate. In spite of all this, they have assimilated.

Such is a variety of paths found in the conglomerate of Hindus. All of them were originated in India. And all of them were identified as Hindus by outsiders. They were venerated, hated, proselytized, executed, oppressed, united and liberated in the name of Hindus.

It is high time that people identify the inherent Hindu-ness in everyone of us.. To understand that despite of all the differences in rituals and world view, there exists an underlying unity amongst all of the Dharmic religions. When people of India wil recognize this unity, that wil mark the end of internal feuds of Hindus.